Judge Denny Chin: The Man Who Controls Bernie’s Fate

The big talk among the white-collar bar back in Gotham today concerns Bernie Madoff’s sentence: What’s he gonna get? Madoff’s lawyer, Ike Sorkin, has asked for 12 years, a sentence that would be, not surprisingly, on the low end of the sentencing range. (The upper limit is 150 years).

The decision falls solely and ultimately on the shoulders of Manhattan federal judge Denny Chin.

Lawyers we talked to had mostly good things to say about Chin, who was appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1994. “He’s got a good reputation,” said Bradley Simon, a former federal prosecutor in New York. “I don’t know many people who have bad things to say about him.”

Simon said he thought Chin might have a slight pro-defense bias. A former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan disagreed, saying he thought Chin was slightly pro-government. “Either way, it’s not that strong a leaning,” said the former AUSA. “He’s certainly not perceived as unfair.”

Another former Manhattan U.S. attorney said that “if you spin the wheel and land on Judge Chin, you’re elated, not because he’s pro-government, necessarily, but because he’s a gentleman, and he’s smart and capable.” He added: “He’s demanding, in a good way. He doesn’t let parties get away with too much.”

According to a Fortune story out Friday, Chin isn’t easy to pigeonhole when it comes to sentencing:

In February, he sentenced Mark Brener, who ran the prostitution business patronized by Eliot Spitzer, to 30 months (the high end of the 24-to-30 months recommended by the sentencing guidelines).

Two years ago, he sent former Coastal Corp. chairman Oscar Wyatt to the federal pen for 12 months and one day — below the 18-to-24-month suggested range — for wire-fraud conspiracy.

The Fortune piece hits the salient points on his upbringing. He was born in Hong Kong; he and his four siblings grew up in the Times Square area — living for a while above an adult movie theater — and then in nearby Hell’s Kitchen.

Chin managed his way to Manhattan’s elite Stuyvesant High, then Princeton and then Fordham Law. After law school, he worked as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell, and then did a stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan. At the time he was tapped for his judgeship — at the age of 39 — he was working at a plaintiffs’ firm that specializes in employment cases.

We caught up with one of his former law clerks today, who dropped a little more knowledge on us. According to the clerk, several years after he’d been on the bench, he had an emergency bypass surgery. During his recovery, he started running, “slowly at first,” says the clerk. But he fell in love with it and, to this day, is a devoted jogger, who typically hits the pavement in lower Manhattan first thing in the morning, often alongside a former law clerk.

Another factoid: Judge Chin is married to a partner in Cadwalader’s heath-care practice group, Kathy Hirata Chin.

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The Law Blog covers the legal arena’s hot cases, emerging trends and big personalities. It’s brought to you by lead writer Jacob Gershman with contributions from across The Wall Street Journal’s staff. Jacob comes here after more than half a decade covering the bare-knuckle politics of New York State. His inside-the-room reporting left him steeped in legal and regulatory issues that continue to grab headlines.

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